Two law enforcement officials from Wildwood, Fla., and New York City also testified that the cheap, highly addictive and increasingly popular drug is as prevalent in rural areas as in big cities.

For more than three hours the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations heard one horror story after another. The panel is considering legislation that increases sentences for possession and sale of cocaine and its more potent byproduct, crack.

Sen. Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., who introduced the anti-cocaine legislation last month, said it takes

1,000 grams of cocaine or crack to get a heavy sentence. ''A thousand grams could kill every person in this room,'' he said.

The most dramatic testimony came from the former addicts.

Shielded from view by a large screen and using the alias Michael Taylor, a Washington man told the Senate panel of earning $100,000 to $200,000 a year working in houses where cocaine powder was refined into waxy pellets and sold for $10 to $20 a hit to everyone from ghetto prostitutes to suburban lawyers. One crack house even accepted checks and extended credit, said Taylor, 29, but deadbeats were not tolerated. ''Cocaine dealers and crack house owners will have a user murdered if his debt gets much beyond $2,000, or sometimes less.''

Charles Jackson told of walking off his job as a copy editor at The Orlando Sentinel in February, visiting a nearby crack house, driving to Lakeland -- where he stole cocaine from a ''curb service'' dealer -- and robbing a St. Petersburg bank of $700 the next day.

Jackson, 26, is now in a drug treatment program in Largo, Fla., where he must spend up to 22 months. He would like to return to journalism or get into public relations or drug counseling.

Sumter County Sheriff Jamie Adams said he first encountered crack last August in Wildwood, a city of 3,322, where the youngest user was a 9-year-old. Since then there have been 34 crack arrests in a county of 27,000, he said.